Free Republic

Democratic presidential aspirants should not feel obligated to self-flagellate to win back the public trust. The what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it media frenzy was just getting started, with Democratic officeholders being pressed by last week’s Sunday morning talk show hosts whether they “got it wrong” on Joe Biden’s fitness, did they “see much” infirmity, and do they “bear some responsibility” for his initial decision to run for re-election. Then we learned later on Sunday that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, and a fresh wave of conspiracy theorizing has begun. After Biden’s office issued a statement, Donald Trump Jr. baselessly suggested the...

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Monday on “Deadline” that American voters were “not smart enough” to keep President Donald Trump away from the presidency. McCaskill said, “There’s a huge swath of Americans that don’t know about that because their algorithms are purposely not feeding them politics because they don’t want to hear about it. But you know what they’re all going to know about? They’re all going to know about higher prices. They’re all going to know that they’re spending more at Walmart than they spent this time last year. They’re all going to know that their 401Ks are down....

A new book revealed that aides to Kamala Harris secretly planned for the possibility of Joe Biden's death in office as early as 2023, further fueling concerns over the former president's age and fitness for office. Questions about Biden's ability to serve another term grew throughout his presidency, with critics pointing to his advanced age and moments of confusion. Despite mounting concerns, Biden and his team insisted he was fit for re-election. However, behind closed doors, Democratic officials reportedly held secret discussions about contingency plans in case Biden had to withdraw or was unable to complete his term, the Guardian...

They’re deep thinkers. Mayor Eric Adams copped to believing the “deep state” is real this week — echoing President Trump and the MAGA movement. “I don’t want to sound conspiracy theory, but there’s a permanent government,” Adams told comedian Andrew Schulz on the “Flagrant Podcast” Wednesday. “There are people that see presidents and mayors come and go. Their attitudes will wait you out.” The admittedly tin foil hat stance from Adams came on the same day a judge dismissed the federal corruption case that has dogged him since September.

Senior Food and Drug Administration leaders are planning for cutbacks to the number of routine food and drug inspections conducted by the agency, multiple officials say, due to steep layoffs this week in support staff. Around 170 workers were cut from the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations, according to two federal health officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. One of the biggest immediate impacts on the agency's inspectors stems from the elimination of the office's travel operations division, one official said. The team's work ranged from booking flights to coordinating with the State Department to secure translators...

Another day, another leak. President Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and others in the National Security Council have used Gmail to conduct official government business according to a leak to The Washington Post. Mike Waltz is already under fire for adding The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat group with high-ranking Trump Administration officials discussing the successful attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen. According to The Post, Mike Waltz did not transmit classified information over his Gmail account – unlike Hillary Clinton while she was the head of the Department of State. The Washington Post reported: Members...

One of the delights of the last couple of months has been watching the Democrats and their regime media adjuncts running their decades-old political playbook and seeing them completely outflanked by the Trump administration running its modern playbook. Check your calendars, guys. It’s 2025, and what used to work doesn’t work anymore. You guys haven’t changed, but we Republicans have. The fact that we are no longer reacting as you expect and demand us to, along with the revolution in media that has allowed us insurgents to evade the regime media gatekeepers, has made all your old go-to moves utterly...

Inside the White House, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been perhaps the biggest proponent of ”Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump’s promised unveiling of sweeping new tariffs on Wednesday. But as the day nears, the potential fallout from those tariffs may well liberate Lutnick from his role in the administration, according to half dozen people close to the White House. While Americans and much of the world brace for a possible season of pain following the imposition of the new tranche of tariffs, Trump’s orbit is ready to play the blame game should things go poorly for the White House. And...

BANGKOK — Chinese rescuers have freed six people from the rubble of an earthquake in Myanmar, including a child and a pregnant woman, Chinese state media reported Monday, placing Beijing at the forefront of an international rescue effort from which the United States has been largely absent. Rescue teams from India, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand and other countries have already arrived in Myanmar. But a U.S. team has yet to appear at the scene of the quake in the Southeast Asian nation, which occurred the same day the State Department informed thousands of employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development,...

AVONDALE, Pa. — In this sleepy, rural corner of southeastern Pennsylvania that produces 70% of the nation’s mushrooms, President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are threatening the American dream for a tight-knit community of generational mushroom farmers and the immigrant workers they have long employed. The year-round work of growing and picking the mushrooms that season the stews and stir-fries on American tables is the basis of the local economy in Avondale, a town of just over 1,200 people where more than 60% are Latino. In recent weeks, several immigrants in the area have already been arrested by federal immigration officials...

Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. attempted to calm the MAHA masses after new CDC director nominee Susan Monarez was attacked online for messages tweeted by a previous director. In a Tuesday X post, RFK Jr. urged, “X posts that erroneously attribute Biden-era tweets supporting masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc. to my @CDCgov Director nominee, Susan Monarez, have understandably provoked agita within the MAHA movement.” “I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans. From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service. “At a moment...

NEW YORK (AP) — During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called “fake news” or an “enemy of the people” by a president and his supporters? They now face a more assertive President Donald Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation’s new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels. Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America....

A crown over a soccer ball. An eyeball that “looked cool.” Flowers. Those are some of the everyday tattoos that defense lawyers say helped lead to the sudden weekend deportation of roughly 200 Venezuelan men who are accused of being members of the ruthless gang Tren de Aragua. Tattoos are signals of membership in some Latin American gangs, with the facial tattoos of the El Salvadoran group MS-13 perhaps the best known. Experts, though, say tattoos are not central to Tren de Aragua. They also note that tattoos, hugely popular all over the world, are often nothing more than body...

They say they’ve been flipped off in traffic, called Nazis and even punched in the face.Charging stations have been defaced and burned too, and local Tesla dealerships have been picketed, including this weekend in Burbank.A disgusted singer Sheryl Crow said she sold her Tesla and donated the money to National Public Radio.“There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with,” she wrote on Instagram. “So long Tesla.”Tesla owners in California and beyond have become targets of an unusual form of resistance to the second Trump administration and Telsa owner Elon Musk, whose so-called...

President Trump’s stop-and-start trade policy and uneven economic messaging have rattled some of his own allies, triggering a flood of calls from business executives, concerns from Republican lawmakers and tension in the White House. Senior officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, have received panicked calls from chief executives and lobbyists, who have urged the administration to calm jittery markets by outlining a more predictable tariff agenda, according to people familiar with the discussions. Many in the business community have abandoned efforts to get the president to reverse course on trade, instead pleading with the White House for...

“$1.9 billion to recently-created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment the money was passed over, by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?” — President Donald Trump, in an address to a joint session of Congress, March 4 We fact-checked 26 claims in Trump’s address on Tuesday night, but this one required more research to nail down. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds like Stacey Abrams somehow got her hands on nearly $2 billion at the “last moment.” Abrams, of course, helped ensure Trump’s 2020 election loss...

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stated in a house committee meeting that federal employees do not deserve their employment or compensation, leaving fellow representatives shocked. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform met on Tuesday to discuss recent developments occuring within the government, including the Trump administration's decision to terminate thousands of federal employees and cut funding from various federal departments in an effort largely spearheaded by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi brought up the administration's stated goals of privatizing the United States Postal Service, citing a report from the Washington Post...

Deputies of Elon Musk have sought access to massive amounts of information across the federal government, much of it personal and highly revelatory in its insights into the lives of everyday Americans. They justify their work for the U.S. DOGE Service as a dogged quest for government efficiency. But people with deep knowledge of federal data systems and cybersecurity say they’re skirting guardrails meant to protect sensitive data from misuse. Before DOGE launched, most of the records at issue were kept in the hands of a select few officials to preserve privacy and avoid crossing legal red lines. Now Musk’s...

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) broke with President Trump over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday and advised against a public spat between the two leaders. “Are you disturbed at all by the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration about Zelensky?” ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Lawler on “This Week.” “I did not agree with the president’s rhetoric about … Zelensky. What I would say is this, it is not — it does not behoove either side to have this public back-and-forth,” Lawler responded.